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Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Top 10 Most Viewed HubPages Articles

One popular topic among freelance writers and bloggers is what topics, posts, and articles do well. Since I've mentioned a couple times this fall that I already have a Christmas article getting a lot of traffic, I've gotten a number of inquiries about that particular post. I thought that it would be interesting to share my top 10 most viewed HubPages articles to date as well as some insight about online writing.

I am certainly not an expert about freelance writing, but I've had a lot of success with HubPages this far. Here are a few pieces of advice that I share with others about this type of writing. Many of these tips are applicable to blog writing, too.

Write about your passions. A lot of people urge freelance writers to write about what they know. While this is a great place to start, it is a little limiting. A huge component of freelance writing is research. There are lots of topics that interest me but that I don't necessary know a lot about so I do a little research. If you enjoy the topics that you're covering, this will be somewhat enjoyable.

Use pictures and other media as it is appropriate. During the past year, Pinterest has been one of my top five traffic sources for HubPages. Needless to say, this is largely because of the high quality photos that I include in many of my articles. Not all articles warrant lots of pictures, but if you write about certain topics, such as crafts, fashion, and food, you should strongly consider it. Other media such as video may be appropriate, too.

Pay attention to what does well and maximize on this success. When I started writing on HubPages, I never imagined that I would write about crafts and holidays as often as I do. My first articles on both of these topics did so well that I decided that it was worth pursuing. There is nothing wrong with branching out once in a while, especially because you never know when you'll hit on a new gold mine. But you should capitalize on success areas on a regular basis.

Don't discount seasonal topics. Many people are wary of writing articles about holidays and other seasonal topics because they have a limited time frame for significant traffic. While you won't get major amounts of traffic on a St. Patrick's Day food article in July, if it's a high quality frequently searched topic, it will get some traffic year round. Also, if you get enough seasonal content going, you'll always have something doing well. Finally, even though these articles don't get steady high traffic, they are still considered "evergreen" because they will be relevant again the next year.

While people may send more cards for Christmas and Mother's Day, there is a huge market for Valentine's Day cards. This article went crazy the entire two weeks before Valentine's Day last year and has continued to have regular traffic since.

This article went viral on an education forum in February. This gave it a huge search results boost. This will never be an article with as much as traffic as a great craft or food topic, but thanks to its early success, it's continued to do significantly better than many of my education articles.

This is my Christmas article that has already done so well this year. It is really hard for me to predict what seasonal articles will do better than others. However, this is kind of a niche topic and it's something that people will search for well before the holiday so it gets a longer traffic run than other Christmas topics will.

This articles goes against several successful article standards, such as that they should be 500 words or more (it's around 450), which just goes to show that there are exceptions to every rule. When I did the research for this, I couldn't find any round up resources that had been updated during the past six months. Sometimes having the most current resource that you update on a regular basis will help you stay competitive.

My earliest craft articles were all related to beadweaving and have been some of my most successful craft articles to date. This is a great niche area without a lot of resources for any particular subtopic, such as beaded beads.

Even though I looked at a number of these pages when you first wrote them, they are worth returning to, which I did! My two favorites are the article on Christmas stockings, and the one on storage. Can't seem to get enough of the latter type of information!

Your articles are always so well written and really cover a lot of information. Along with your great photos, I'm not surprised you're doing so well on Hub Pages :)You brought up great points about writing holiday articles early and writing about what you're passionate about.

rose - Great article! I am so proud of you! I would so much like to do this, but I'm so squeezed for time already! Maybe one day... You might have spoken to this before, but a question? Do you update your current articles, or rewrite, or just let unpopular articles "die off"? {:-D

Welcome to my blog!

Welcome to my blog! My name is Rose Clearfield. My husband and I live in Milwaukee, WI with our three cats. We love it here. I use this blog to share my creative process, sources of creative inspiration, happenings on Etsy, and much more. If you ever have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.